Communication between parties in a telecommunications network can be carried out in a number of ways. Most commonly, communication is carried out by a calling party dialing the telephone dialing number of a called party telephony device on a calling party telephony device. The dialing of the telephone number causes a call set-up process to be carried out in the network which results in the telephone of the called party ringing. If the called party chooses to answer their telephone, a telephone call can ensue between the calling party and the called party. The telephone call allows audio data such as speech data to be transferred along an audio channel created between the calling party telephony device and the called party telephony device.
Some telephony devices have enhanced capabilities which allow transfer of video data along a video channel created between the calling party telephone and the called party telephone. A video call may not be possible unless both the calling and called party telephone devices support video call functionality.
Audio or video conferencing may be carried out between three or more remote telephony devices, allowing communication of audio and/or video data between parties to the conference.
Web conferencing is also possible between multiple remote parties using devices with combined data processing, display and telephony capabilities. Web conferencing allows online meetings to be conducted for viewing and/or collaborating on common multimedia content.
Parties may also exchange text data by use of text messaging services such as the Short Message Service (SMS). Enhanced messaging services such as the Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) allow parties to exchange image and video data in addition to text data.
The example methods of communication described above provide a wide range of options for remote parties to communicate with each other. However, each method typically has different requirements in terms of device and/or network capability and interchanging between the different methods is either not possible or requires use of inconvenient set-up or configuration processes.
It would therefore be desirable to provide improved methods for communication between remote parties.